From the message boards:
from godless:
who fucking gives a shit about this stupid Iraqi museum? such a mountain out of a molehill, comparatively speaking…jayzus christ! stupid liberals and their moving goalposts…not enough to totally and utterly kick ass, oh no, we need to do all this other stupid shit or else we’re “negligent”. God, these people at this university…they annoy me intensely, particularly because I cannot respond…
from zizka:
Not a stupid museum. Civilization began in Iraq.
from godless:
I am, I confess, an unrepentant cultural philistine in this context. I basically think that the looting of the museum shouldn’t be such a big deal, compared to the fall of Saddam’s regime and the liberation of Iraq. I mean, it’s not like people from the West were able to travel to Baghdad and check out these relics before Saddam’s regime fell, so we’re where we started off before the war. More importantly, the people of Baghdad are probably a hell of a lot better off with no museum/no Saddam than the previous state of unlooted museum/Saddam present. (razib’s added emphasis)
from alpha:
Call me cold, but, the contents of the Iraq museum are more important to me than the Iraqi people or their freedom – i couldn’t care less about them.
Well, it won’t be surprising to anyone that I care. But godless makes a good point, for what price shall we fund the “finer things” of this life, rice for the people? I favor the space program, but the money that goes into such things could feed many. We often value things on an aesthetic or personal level that might not pan out on a first-order utilitarian accounting.
To follow-up alpha-this generation of Iraqis will come and go, but the memory of Ur will last for centuries (has lasted for the cycle of written history already). But these questions are important to ask-especially when others pay the price for the beauty of this world (save the rainforest-but what about poor landless farmers that burn it trying to feed their family?).
On a historical note, Mo-Tzu, Chinese utilitarian and proponent of “universal equal love” par excellance militated constantly against “music,” a byword for the useless ritual and frippery that characterized ancient Chinese life, especially major rituals such as mourning. Confucius rejected this view, and asserted that there was value in such things, not measured in bread and water, his language to me often sounding Burkean in an East Asian context. Are we more than metabolic instruments-converting nutrients into energy and tissue? I believe so. Does the spirit of God(s) animate us? I doubt it.
More later….
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